change type of result variables to ssize_t

[libserialport.git] / README

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libserialport: cross-platform library for accessing serial ports
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libserialport is a minimal library written in C that is intended to take care
of the OS-specific details when writing software that uses serial ports.

By writing your serial code to use libserialport, you enable it to work
transparently on any platform supported by the library.

The operations that are supported are:

- Port enumeration (obtaining a list of serial ports on the system).
- Obtaining port metadata (USB device information, Bluetooth address, etc).
- Opening and closing ports.
- Setting port parameters (baud rate, parity, etc).
- Reading, writing and flushing data.
- Obtaining error information.

libserialport is an open source project released under the LGPL3+ license.

Status
======

The library should build and work on any Windows or Unix-based system. If it
does not, please submit a bug.

Enumeration is currently implemented on Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Linux.
On other systems enumeration is not supported, but ports can still be opened
by name and then used.

If you know how to enumerate available ports on another OS, please submit a bug
with this information, or better still a patch implementing it.

Dependencies
============

No other libraries are required.

Building
========

On Windows, libserialport can be built with Visual Studio 2019 or with
the standalone MSBuild tool, using the solution and project files provided.

For other environments, the package uses a GNU style build based on autotools.

Run "./autogen.sh" to generate the build system, "./configure" to setup, then
"make" to build the library and "make install" to install it.

Windows builds can also be created using the autotools build system, using the
MinGW-w64 toolchain from http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net/ - either natively
in Windows with the MSYS2 environment, or cross-compiling from another system.

To build from MSYS2, the following packages must be installed: autoconf,
automake-wrapper, libtool, make, and either mingw-w64-i686-gcc (for 32-bit)
or mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc (for 64-bit). Open either the "MSYS2 MinGW 32-bit" or
"MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit" command window from the Start menu and use this when
configuring and building the package. Using the "MSYS2 MSYS" shell will build
against the Cygwin compatibility layer; this works, but port enumeration and
metadata will not be available, and binaries will depend on Cygwin. The builds
produced by MinGW-w64 are normal Windows DLLs without additional dependencies.

API
===

Doxygen API documentation is included.

It can also be viewed online at:

  http://sigrok.org/api/libserialport/unstable/

Bug reports
===========

You can report bugs for libserialport at https://sigrok.org/bugzilla.

Mailing list
============

 https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sigrok-devel

IRC
===

You can find the developers in the #sigrok IRC channel on Libera.Chat.

Website
=======

http://sigrok.org/wiki/Libserialport